This might be the wrong place to put this, but I didn’t know where else to fit it in so if it needs to be moved feel free to do so
Anyways, I’ve been working on a little side project in my free time. As the Stonehearth community grows, as does the community for producing/using mods, and this one is growing fast! I have been working on a website specifically dedicated to mods (browsing, downloading, uploading, communicating with authors, finding tutorials, all that). It’s very similar to sites for other games like Minecraft and Kerbal Space Program that have whole sites/communities just for modding.
My question is, is this okay? I wanted to check it out before publishing the site, because I wanted to make sure I wasn’t stepping on any toes or anything like that. Also, if it IS okay, is it appropriate to publicize something like that on the Stonehearth discourse? I wouldn’t want to break any policies or make anyone upset by “advertising” where I’m not supposed to It’s nothing monetary, I’m hosting the webservers and stuff out of pocket, and there are no ads or anything, I purely wanted to make it for the community to use/learn/grow.
It is more a piece of software that helps users add mods to their games than a website for communication and tutorials, but it handles the browsing, downloading, and uploading features you suggested.
Yes.
I feel it is perfectly OK to make an announcement about the site here, and post major update news as you feel appropriate. Mentioning it in some relevant posts is likely also OK. Posting links to your website all over the Discourse in every 3 topics is not OK. I trust that you can find/understand the difference between encouraging people to visit and spamming. (and the moderators will certainly let you know if you don’t ).
All that being said, I am curious what you feel a dedicated website will do that the Discourse cannot. While I do not pretend that Discourse can do everything, I am having a hard time picturing what a dedicated site would do for people, when a mod upload/download site exists already, and lots of modding discussion/tutorials happen here. Don’t want to get to a place where a mod creator has to know the X sites to post there mod on!
Yeah I did find that when I was rooting around for mods/tutorials, I just feel that (especially with a community like this one) there is room for different styles/approaches to processes like modding.
Also I was unaware that Radiant had “endorsed” (maybe that’s the wrong word, I just get that from you saying “we already have”) PraiseDB. And that’s the other thing, like I said about having different styles/approaches to the situation, I’ve always believed that having multiple people contributing solutions produces the highest quality results.
As far as I can tell, PraiseDB (like you said) is more a piece of software to integrate the mod-downloading process directly into the game. With my site I’m focusing much more on the design/user-flow of the site itself to make it easier, more enjoyable, and more efficient for users to browse/download/interact with mods and authors. Maybe the maker of PraiseDB would be interested in collaborating (I’ve already got webservers, databases, user account management, community tools, etc. all set up, maybe they’d be interested in integrating our two services together)?
Yeah that would seem a bit excessive I didn’t plan on doing this at all, I simply wanted to make sure that I wouldn’t be violating any rules by talking about it on the discourse
That’s a good point, and I do agree with you here, I don’t think there’s ANYTHING wrong with having stuff like this on the discourse. I just think that people like having dedicated (“specialized”) places to go for stuff like this - places where you can view mods on their own pages with clean/obvious buttons/stats/info (instead of searching for a download link in a mod post, and where you can have thumbnails, screenshots, videos, download/popularity stats, version info, etc. all prominently displayed because they’re on pages dedicated and designed to do just that).
@8BitCrab hit it right on the nose: we aren’t employees of TR, just volunteers on the Discourse. Praise DB is not endorsed by TR to the best of my knowledge.
Well…we do have some more direct methods of communication with them…but that is about it for “level higher”.
This makes a lot of sense! Good luck, looking forward to seeing the site when you launch it.
Thanks!
I really hope that @Praise is interested in collaborating I think it’d be really cool to see something like my site hook into an application like theirs and provide a single workflow for everything mod related
).
